Filibuster Cartoons
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Well it looks like the previous day’s cartoon was a bit off. British Liberal Democratic Party leader Nicholas Clegg ultimately decided to throw his support behind the Conservative Party and form a left-right coalition government with them, eschewing any apparent ideological contradictions. Conservative leader David Cameron has formally assumed office as prime minister, and Clegg will be his deputy. It’s the first British coalition government in 62 years, they say.
Cameron is an interesting guy. Though he’s often presented as someone who has worked hard to “moderate” his party’s hard-right Thatcherite conservatism for 21st Century sensibilities, he’s really a more complex figure than that. Watch his first press conference or his inaugural speech for example, and you’ll see a guy who is very thoughtful and purposeful in his rhetoric, spelling out an vision for Britain that is quite unique in agenda and scope. He still comes off as identifiably conservative, but it’s a different sort of conservatism. Less angry, divisive, and money-focused, and more traditionalist, in the sense of championing traditional social values like responsibility, self-reliance, charity, and maturity.
One of the biggest problems in the contemporary UK is the phenonom of what they call “anti-social behavior,” which is understood to mean rude, cruel, or disrespectful attitudes and actions which collectively lower the morale and culture of the nation, as well as motivate other, more serious social ills. It’s a particularly big deal in the context of British society, which has been historically famous for its manners and restraint, and an issue Cameron has vowed to make one of his top priorities as prime minister. I think it’s quite interesting to have a conservative politician addressing social problems in such a way. Conservatives are usually known for being reactionary, in the sense of formulating policies that react to things, such as crime, terrorism, illegal immigration, taxes, big government, etc. Cameron’s vision is more geared towards “root causes” — an approach that has traditionally been the understood realm of the left, though it doesn’t have to be.
Cameron has the potential to be quite a transformative figure in Anglo-American conservative thought and rhetoric the same way Margaret Thatcher was decades ago. The importance of Thatcherism stemmed largely from her free-market / anti-socialist arguments, which in the context of her time, were indeed important and influential. But now there’s a great deal of consensus on economic issues, and far less on social ones. I don’t think the future of conservatism is to simply jettison social issues, as some are always encouraging, but to rather explore them in new, thoughtful ways that supersede the traditional abortion-gay-religion axis. That seems to be the essence of Cameronism.
Of course, it remains to be seen how exactly he plans to address these social-cultural problems in practice, especially in the context of a coalition government with a party much more liberal than his. But the potential for a new kind of politics is certainly there, and I wish the Prime Minister well in pursuing that goal.
